To anyone who feels like the weight of their constant mistakes has irreparably hindered their progress (but especially to #phd students in #stem fields), this thread is for you.

Read on, darlings.

About a year ago, my advisor came in over a weekend or a holiday (I can't remember, and it only matters to this story because I didn't hear the results until a few days later) to run some western blots to get data for a quickly approaching grant.

The next time I saw her, I asked how they turned out and she gushed about how good they looked. I made some pithy comment about the science gods "smiling on our lab in our time of need," or something obnoxious like that.

I will never forget her response.

She said, "Yeah, either that, or the fact that I've spent the last 10 years doing western blots."

.........

As I'm moving into my 6th and final year of my PhD, I've thought about this conversation almost every day, especially as I've been able to get several key pieces of data within the last 6 months that I've been struggling for *years* to get.

Take today, for instance. I ran 8 ELISA plates for 5 different cytokines across 3 different tissues from 2 different time points. It was 54 tissues samples in all. I have *never* prepped that many samples simultaneously, and I've never run that many plates at the same time.

I've also never gotten so much data that so gorgeously pools data from other experiments. I was seriously swooning.

What happened? Have the gods decided to smile on me? Is my head sharper because I started using (abusing?) caffeine for the first time in my life a few months ago?

Of course not. It's because every time I got crappy ELISA results, I learned how to *not* do an ELISA. I learned which dilutions to use for each tissue on the BCA so that it doesn't get blown out 3 times. I learned the optimal concentration of protein to load in each well.

I learned how to lay out all my Excel spreadsheets the same way so the data basically analyzes itself. I learned how to decide on a consistent way to analyze after spending HOURS last week fixing incorrectly analyzed data from years ago (yeah...it was bad) etc, etc, etc.

Every single stupid mistake that I was embarrassed to explain to my advisor and that made me furious that I was still making as a 5th year, everything that made me feel inferior to our technicians and the junior graduate students in the lab lead to today's gorgeous results.

This year, I've felt a lot of things, both conceptual and technical, begin to lock in in ways that they haven't before. Older graduate students promised me this would happen and I didn't believe them, but guys....it's happening!

It's a common thing to hear (in my department at least) that the first 3-4 years of your PhD are "trash" (in terms of the quality and quantity of usable data you'll produce), and I hate that. Because no one wakes up one day being able to do beautiful blots or qPCRs.

Sure, you probably won't publish most of that data, because you're building a project and NO ONE publishes the beginning of the story. But do not let ANYONE tell you that the precious time you're struggling through right now is garbage.

I don't know if this is useful for anyone, but if there are other graduate students like me who are terrified of making mistakes and become paralyzed by the anxiety and mortification surrounding them, please please please, I promise you:

You're getting better. You're learning.

Catching your own mistakes is awful, and having them pointed out by other people is even worse, but you'll get better, & soon things that used to be so hard and so scary will become so effortless, other people will think that you're just super talented. But you'll know the truth:

Talent is a myth. Seriously. It's not real. Everything is just a skill that can be improved with practice and time.

My brother is a brilliant professional artist, but it's not because he was born with something I wasn't (I was once able to draw better than he did).

It's because once he picked up a pen, he NEVER PUT IT DOWN. It's because he *works* so insanely hard and has studied and practiced more than almost anyone I know.

My friends are sometimes jealous of how well I sing (for which I was cast in a professional musical this summer), but it's the same thing. I'm a good singer b/c I've been singing as long as I can remember & bc I pay a professional to point out my mistakes so I can sing better.

So why am I going down this seemingly self-indulgent rabbit hole? B/c a year ago, I didn't think I was good at anything. Grad school was dark and depressing and there was no end in sight. My failures and weaknesses kept compounding until they were suffocating.

I felt like I was constantly being criticized (even for things that I thought I was good at) and eventually kept telling myself that I wasn't smart enough or whatever enough to be good at grad school.

I was so fixated on *who* I didn't think I was as a human (ie, fixed personality traits) that I totally overlooked how many things I could have (and have since) learned how to do

Anything I'm good at now, both professionally and personally, is because of practice and the humility to receive correction.

That's it. Everything gets better with practice.

I promise you, no matter how bad you are at something,

You are good enough. You are smart enough. You are dedicated and gritty and brave enough to do whatever it is you think you can't.

If you suck at something, who cares? It's not you. There's nothing wrong with you. It's probably just hard.

Whatever it is you're struggling with is just a skill that can be learned. Keep practicing. You'll get better.

(I clearly feel really strongly about this and would love to discuss further if anyone is interested!)